The Jacket Affair
by Flavato Forever
Summary: Scorpion AU: Happy accidentally goes home from a party with someone else's jacket. One-shot.
In hindsight, Happy really should have realized that this was not her jacket.

When she slipped it over herself, there was a bit too much room around the shoulders; the fabric bunched up in a way that it had not a few hours before. But she'd been in a rush to leave Erin's party, and she was pretty sure she's lost some weight recently, so she'd ignored the odd fit.

As she drove home, she kept getting a whiff of a smell she didn't recognize. It was a nice smell – a really, _really_ nice smell, she decided at the traffic light on Hope Street. She couldn't describe it; it was definitely masculine, but there was a twinge of something almost sweet as well.

It wasn't until she got into her apartment that she figured out that it was coming from her jacket. She just assumed she'd brushed up against someone at the party long enough for the smell to linger – god knows there were enough people there wearing way too much cologne – reached into her pocket for her phone.

Instead of her phone, she pulled out a wad of crumpled papers. That in itself wasn't really alarming – she had a habit of stuffing receipts in whatever receptacle was nearest to her hand. But then she flattened the papers to find a dizzying array of numbers, and she realized she had inadvertently become a thief.

She pulled the jacket off and set it on the counter gingerly, like one might an exceptionally fragile vase. It wasn't a very nice piece of clothing, as far as clothing goes: it was fake leather, old and worn. She'd gotten it – or, at least, she'd gotten her version of it – for twenty dollars at Target six months prior. It was comfortable, though. She'd grown to like it a lot, and she was pretty mad that someone had it while she had _this_.

Happy went over to her landline. She almost never used it, other than to give stores a phone number to put on calling lists. The overly-large hunk of plastic sat next to her fridge, a hold-over from a different, less-efficient era. She was vaguely surprised to see that it still worked; she honestly could not remember paying a bill for it in years.

Erin was probably her best bet at retrieving her jacket, assuming whoever had it had noticed it was a few sizes too small. She picked up on the forth ring.

"Hello?"

Music was playing in the background. Happy had ducked out of the party early, feeling claustrophobic and bored; it hadn't even occurred to her that there would still be people there.

"Erin?"

"Yes? Who's this?"

"Happy."

"Happy? My phone didn't recognize your number. Where are you calling from?"

"My house phone."

"You still have a house phone?"

"Yes, but Erin, I think I left my jacket at your party."

"What? I swear you were wearing it when you left."

It took a minute to explain the situation to Erin – who was distracted and pretty drunk – but eventually the woman managed to get everyone at her place quiet while someone called Happy's phone. It went straight to voicemail; it must have been off.

"Look, Happy, I'll keep an eye out, but I think whoever has your jacket left already."

Happy sighed heavily. "Do you have a list of everyone who came?"

Erin laughs on the other end of the line. "Nah, you know how it is. Everyone invited their friends, who invited their friends, who invited-"

"Their friends. Got it. Hey, if it turns up?"

"I'll give you a call."

"Thanks."

Happy hung up and ran her fingers through her hair. Parties really weren't her thing. She didn't even know Erin that well – their paths had crossed a few times at the gym where Happy went to box, and Erin had invited her to a Super Bowl watch party kind of out-of-the-blue. Happy hadn't watched the game; she'd just hung around by the snack table, munching on chips and counting down the seconds until she'd stayed long enough to be considered polite.

And now her jacket – and phone – was missing.

She dug through the rest of the pockets in the imposter jacket, looking for some clue as to who the owner might be. There wasn't a phone or car keys – she was slightly relieved she hadn't left anyone stranded outside of Erin's house – but she did find, of all things, a bright green carabiner, a thick sponge, a metal spoon, and a very small and very ugly pewter elephant.

If nothing else, whoever owned this jacket had a very, very odd taste in knick-knackery.

Ignoring the weird collection of totally unrelated junk, the wadded up pieces of paper were the only things in the jacket that might give Happy any clue as to who had her own. She looked at them again. There were six pieces altogether, each with an apparently-completely-random assortment of numbers that even Happy couldn't make heads or tails of. She twisted the papers around, as if upside-down they might hold some meaning, but still no pattern jumped out of the mess.

She was about to fall asleep at her kitchen counter when there was a knock on the door. The clock on the oven read ten minutes passed midnight.

Happy walked over and opened her front door to find a tall man standing there, holding – _hallelujah_ – her jacket.

"So, you must be the woman who stole my coat."

There was a goofy look on his face, like he'd caught a child sneaking cookies. His chin was stubbly and he was wearing a grey hat. He seemed like the kind of guy who might carry a pewter elephant around in his pocket.

"Hey, I'm sorry. Our jackets look really similar and-"

"Mm-hm, that's what they all say." The man brushed passed her into her apartment and looked around. "I'm sure it had nothing to do with my devilish good looks, did it?"

"Look, man-"

"Oh my goodness, look at me. I didn't even introduce myself." He stuck out his hand. "Dr. Tobias M. Curtis, MD."

"You know, if you call yourself a doctor, you don't need to specify that you have a MD."

"Well, I wouldn't want you going around thinking I had a _PhD_ , would I?" He smiled. "I mean, I do have a PhD. I just also have an MD."

Happy would have snapped at him for being rude and presumptuous and pretentious if he hadn't kept talking without skipping a beat.

"I'd ask who you are, but I already know. Happy Quinn. I found your phone in my – well, _your_ – jacket and, wouldn't you know, it only took about ten minutes of sweet talking the Verizon call center to get your name."

Happy, sick of listening, sick of this weird man in her space, grabbed his jacket from her counter.

"Here. Now you can go back to whatever circle of hell you crawled out of, Doctor."

To her surprise, the man laughed.

"Please, call me Toby. And I'll be happy to leave, as soon as I answer your question."

"I didn't ask a question."

"You didn't have to. I could see it the moment you opened that door. You went through my pockets" – Happy opened her mouth to explain, but Toby stuck a finger up to silence her – "and don't worry, I know you were very innocently trying to figure out who I was so you could return my jacket, but you found quite the hodgepodge of stuff and you're wondering just why I had it all."

"No, I was actually wondering why the hell you're still in my apartment."

Toby ignored her, leaning back against the wall of her living room.

"Alright, so I have this neighbor..."

* * *

Toby wove a story about the woman who lived across the hall from him. He was sure she was running a drug operation out of his apartment and had devised a ridiculously-elaborate scheme for proving it. Despite herself, Happy was intrigued.

"So all that stuff is just to get you into her apartment?"

"The carabiner, the spoon, and the elephant, yep."

"And then the sponge will go in the tank of her toilet?"

"Exactly, and then-"

"Why don't you just slip it in her air vent, while you're in her bathroom anyway?" Confusion flashed across Toby's face. "What would that do?"

"Your plan relies on scaring her into flushing some drugs down the toilet. But if you just let her go about her business, over time, a measurable amount of drug particulates is bound to get in the air and get sucked up into the heating vent."

Toby's eyes widened. "Which would stick to the sponge with the acid on it."

"Exactly. No drug-flushing required. That gets rid of whatever scare-optimization math you were doing on the paper, doesn't it?"

Happy enjoyed the shock on Toby's face. It was clear that he was used to having an audience completely incapable of following along with, let alone improving, his rambling ideas.

"Happy Quinn, you are quite the woman."

"Does this mean you'll leave now?" An hour had passed and Happy's eyelids were growing heavy.

"I will, on one condition."

"Mm?"

"Come on a date with me tomorrow."

Happy laughed. "No, thank you. I'm good."

"You _are_ good. So good, in fact, that you are worth much more to this planet than whatever you're accomplishing in that repair shop you work in."

Happy narrowed her eyes. "What?"

Toby smiled. "There's a lot more than an address to be found on Google, my dear. Look, I work with a group of contractors for the Department of Homeland Security. I think you'd be a good fit on our team. I also think you'd be a good other half for me, but that can wait. I'm a patient man." He stood up, pulled a small card out of his back pocket, and handed it to her. She read it as he walked to her front door: _Dr. Tobias M. Curtis, Scorpion Incorporated_.

Just before Toby left her apartment, he said, "I look forward to seeing more of you, Happy." Then he shut the door behind him, leaving Happy alone in the strangely-empty silence.


End file.
